


Between the Bars

by language_escapes



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1435957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Wanna get a drink?"</p><p>"God, yes."</p><p>It becomes a ritual of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Bars

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "Joan, Marcus Bell, drink".
> 
> Warnings for some ableism. Content warning for drinking. Contains spoilers for 2x10 Tremors, 2x18 The Hound of the Cancer Cells, and possibly mild ones for 2x19 The Many Mouths of Aaron Colville. Title from the Elliott Smith song of the same name.
> 
> I wrote this in about twenty minutes while at work. It's a mess and completely unbeta'd. Sorry.

It becomes a ritual of sorts.

Whenever they work on a case together, they find time a few days after the close to get a drink together. Holmes can’t drink, but Joan enjoys a beer every now and then. The Captain is always inviting Marcus to grab a drink with him, and sometimes he accepts, but most of the time he just thinks it’s weird to get a drink with your boss.

It happens by accident, the first time. It’s after Holmes gets himself kidnapped. She sees him off in the ambulance- an unnecessary precaution, he’d insisted loudly, repeatedly, until someone caved and strapped an oxygen mask over his face just to get him to shut up- and when she turns around, she falters, just for a moment. Just for a moment, her mask of calm determination slips, and Marcus sees that she’s _upset_ , even though Holmes is fine and they caught their killer.

“Wanna get a drink?” he blurts before he can stop and think about it.

“God, yes,” she says, desperate, and then cringes. “I shouldn’t, though. Sherlock-”

“Can wait,” he says firmly. “He’s gonna be at the hospital for a while. It won’t kill you to drink one beer.”

Her hesitation is obvious, but he wheedles and she caves, and they head to a bar where she drinks maybe three sips of her beer before she halts and insists she needs to go. He doesn’t stop her, just tips his beer in salute, and watches her leave.

Her hesitation becomes more understandable when he finds out about the whole sober companion thing.

The next time they grab a drink together is after she brings him in on the money laundering dry cleaners. She goes home afterwards, presumably to tell Holmes, but he gets a call that night when he’s getting ready to do a load of laundry.

“Wanna get a drink?” she asks, voice dry, and he can recognize his own words, even months down the line.

He looks at the pile of t-shirts and dirty underwear in front of him and says, just as dry, “God, yes.”

After that, it’s what they do. Him and Joan. A bar, a beer, and a close to whatever case they’ve been working on. It’s good. It works. He finds that he likes Joan for who she is, not just what she can do. She has a quiet, dry humour similar to his own, and he finds himself choking on his beer while laughing on more than one occasion, Joan smirking at him over the lip of her bottle. To his surprise, he makes her laugh, too, sometimes. He finds himself working for that rare, unguarded laugh.

They complain, occasionally, about Holmes or the Captain or work, but if the case was messy enough, the outcome unpleasant enough, they declare it a work-free zone and focus on other things. After the Milverton murder, they play darts for hours, and, under his tutelage, Joan goes from barely being able to hit the board to hitting bullseye every time. After the Irene/Moriarty debacle, he learns that Joan plays a ferocious game of strip poker, and she learns that he prefers boxer-briefs. Over the summer, he teases her about the colours she paints her toenails, and she mocks him for still wearing a tie even on the hottest days. They swap as many no-cook recipes as they can, neither of them particularly gifted chefs. He tells her about how he wanted to do something with music, once, as a career; she tells him how she wanted to be an Olympic runner and all her time training on the track team. She calls him a band geek; he calls her a jock with a sneer in his voice. She tells him, in halting, scattered anecdotes, about her years as a doctor. He tells her in a dismissive tone that doesn’t do much to hide his resentment about the battle to become a detective. She brings Emily, one night, Hope and Ken another. He brings Andre from time to time. They talk idly of family and lovers and disappointment, of friends and new family and trust. It’s simple, it’s easy.

Then he gets shot. And then nothing is easy.

He doesn’t blame Joan. He feels himself get angry at her now and then, for having steady hands, for being optimistic all the time, for trying too hard, for not trying enough, for _being there_ \- but he doesn’t blame her. He knows the anger is irrational, and it isn’t really at her; it’s at himself and the situation he’s in, but it still burns hotly when he looks at her, smiling brightly and bringing him food, like he’s some kind of cripple (which he is), like he can’t cook for himself (which he can’t), like he needs her to help keep his head above water (which he does).

Irrational, he knows.

They don’t go for drinks for a long time after that. He switches departments (and he hates every minute of his time in Demographics, pasting a smile on his face as his boss says racist shit that’s been cleaned up for public consumption, but at least he’s got a job and is still working and is trying to be useful), which means they don’t close cases together, and even after he switches back, he doesn’t ask her and she doesn’t ask him. He likes to think it’s just because they aren’t working as many cases together still, with him stuck riding a desk, but he knows that it’s a mix of his own irrational anger and her misplaced guilt. They talk, often, and he makes sure to invite her and Holmes to his welcome back party, but he can’t quite get himself to ask her to grab a drink with him.

There’s also the issue of Holmes standing between them. His anger at Joan may be irrational, but his anger at Holmes is not. And it hurts, to see her still by his side, after all that happened.

When he gets coffee with Holmes- a very different experience than getting a drink with Joan- they manage to work a few things out without actually talking about it. Holmes doesn’t try to apologize again, just listens as Marcus explains about Manny Rose and Martenz, and though it may not seem like much to an outsider, it means more to him than any of his other apologies or fumbled attempts to regain his trust. It means he’s trying to get out of his head for once and see the other people around him. Marcus is still angry at him, probably will be for a long time, but he feels more settled after they talk. Like maybe they’ll be able to work together smoothly in the future, and that maybe the sense of trust will come back, with time and patience and effort.

When he arrives at his welcome back party with Holmes at his side, he sees Joan give them a swift, darting glance, and he offers her a smile in return. Her own smile back is hesitant and unsure. He makes sure to have a beer sent her way, a signal that things are fine. Maybe they aren’t up to getting drinks yet, just the two of them, but where his relationship with Holmes is rocky, his relationship with Joan is a rock. Even when he was angry at her, even while she stood at Holmes’ side, he knew she had his back. 

After the Aaron Colville case, after Joan spends the entire investigation looking frayed at the edges and slightly frantic, he tamps down what is left of his anger and hurt, picks up his cell phone, and calls her. 

“Hey Marcus,” Joan says when she answers. She sounds tired. In the background, he can hear the sound of a paper shredder going. He’s very familiar with the sound, having done most of the shredding for the precinct lately. “What’s up?”

“Wanna get a drink?” he asks without preamble.

There’s a pause, both from her and from the shredder. The pause goes on long enough that he starts to wonder if he’s taken a step too far, too fast, if she’s still wanting to maintain the slight, professional distance that has built up between them, but then she says, in a tone that is somehow both dry and desperate at once, “God, yes.”

He grins and leans back on his couch. “Sounds like I caught you doing something unpleasant.”

She laughs. “Not unpleasant, just… necessary. Give me half an hour? Do you want to meet at that bar on-”

“Actually,” he interrupts, glancing at the paint shaker the guys gave him, still sitting underneath his television where he left it, “I think I owe you a martini. My place?”

“Sure,” she agrees easily, and hangs up.

Marcus stands, heading to his kitchen to dig out the ingredients for martinis, and smiles to himself. He thinks she’ll appreciate seeing the framed target from his firearms requalification test, hanging in a place of honour in his living room.


End file.
